Boris Becker has revealed details of his longtime dependence on sleeping pills and alcohol to battle the pressures of his tennis career, loneliness and depression and how in one drunken stupor he asked his wife to shoot him.“Sleeping pills were my problem,” the three-time Wimbledon champion wrote in his autobiography, which will be published next week. The mass-circulation newspaper Bild began running excerpts from the book yesterday.In today’s installment, Becker describes how he suffered from insomnia for years and took ever increasing dosages of sleeping pills, helped down by beer and whisky.His dependence began in 1987, two years after he captured his first Wimbledon title as teenager, Becker said.“I wanted to come out of my slump in 1987. I wanted to be back at the top, to win again at any price,” Becker wrote. “I sought a solution for every little problem: Against a weak forehand, two hours of practicing forehands, against a weak serve, two hours of practicing serves.“There was planum (sleeping pills) against insomnia, a couple of other pills against pain. Against loneliness, women helped, and whisky, or both.“I had to reduce my tournament schedule because I needed time to recuperate from pills,” Becker wrote.It was not until 1992, five years after he first started taking the pills, that Becker kicked the habit with the help of his wife, Barbara.“Only in 1992 would Barbara throw my last packet out of the window of her apartment,” he said.Becker also described how he returned one night from the Oktoberfest in Munich so drunk and confused that he asked Barbara to shoot him.“It was a cool October night when I asked my wife to shoot me. I was standing almost naked on the terrace of our Munich house and I couldn’t stand this roller-coaster in my skull. During the evening, I was at the Oktoberfest. A beer here, a schnapps there, just like the Munich people celebrate at the fest,” he wrote.Becker said he got his first sleeping pills from Germany’s Davis Cup team doctor Joseph Keul because he had problems sleeping.The former tennis star said he had to increase the dosage over the years because the pills would not work for more than three or four hours.“There were times I could not close my eyes at all without sleeping pills,” Becker wrote, blaming a crowded schedule and jet leg for his insomnia.The pills, however, made him melancholic and depressed, Becker said, and also affected his performance on the court.In the night before the 1990 Wimbledon final against Stefan Edberg, Becker twice had to take a dose and was late for his pre-match warm-up practice.“I began the match as a sleepwalker,” Becker wrote. He lost the first two sets, then recovered to win the next two but lost the decisive fifth.In addition to insomnia, nightmares, jet lag and tiredness, Becker said he also suffered from claustrophobia.He described how he nearly “flipped out” when he was stuck in an elevator for half an hour with the three tenors - Luciano Pavarotti, Placido Domingo and Jose Carreras - following a concert in Munich’s Olympic Hall.While the three tenors broke into Ave Maria, “I was just worried about my little life, I didn’t want to flip out,” Becker said.Becker became one of Germany’s biggest sports heroes after his story-book Wimbledon triumph in 1985. But since his retirement in 1999, Becker has gone through a messy divorce, fathered a child during a brief fling with a Russian-born model in London, experienced several business failures and accepted a hefty fine by German tax authorities. He has announced his intention to move to Switzerland.His autobiography, Augenblick, Verweile Doch. (Hold it, why don’t you stay.), hits book stores next weeks.
